Drivers

Teamsters Local Declared Mob-Free

A New Jersey Teamsters local, considered the most mob-riddled union in the country for decades, has direct control for the first time in nearly 12 years.

U.S. District Judge Harold Ackerman removed his court-ordered trustee from Teamsters Local 550 in Union City, NJ. He accepted the word of the trustee and law enforcement officials that the union was finally free of the Mafia “cancer” that drained its pension and murdered dissidents, reports the Associated Press.Ackerman got the case when the U.S. Justice Department sued the union in 1982. In 1986, he imposed the order, the first federal takeover of a union. The local has about 4,400 members, mostly truck drivers, warehouse workers and factory employees. Its longtime boss was linked to the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.In the union’s first election in a decade, members chose former truck driver Pete Brown as president. He soundly defeated two other tickets, including one led by the nephew of Michael Sciarra, who was elected president in 1988 but expelled for associating with the Genovese crime family.